There is a continual need in the area of electronics and electronic computing systems toward smaller systems and/or systems with greater computing performance for a given space. As systems become smaller and more dense, the area available for integrated circuit mounting and placement also decreases. One approach is to stack circuits and circuit boards vertically, where in the past, electronics have predominately been mounted horizontally on the top and bottom surface of a board. As circuits and boards are stacked vertically in new designs for increased density, the number of electrical connections remains roughly the same or even increases. A number of prior art methods have been used to address the issue of electrical connections in integrated circuits, but these methods have shortcomings including high cost, complexity, physical constraints and other technical issues.
There are various types of integrated circuit devices providing different functionality. One type of integrated circuit device is dynamic random access memory (DRAM), which is common in many electronics systems. A typical DRAM module includes a rectangular board with DRAM chips on both sides of the board and interconnects on a long edge of the board. In this type of module, the memory capacity is constrained by the surface area of the board and the memory density of the DRAM chips.
Due to technological and design considerations, increasing the number of modules, increasing the height or width of the modules, or increasing the memory density of the DRAM chips may not be possible or cost effective. Therefore it would be desirable to provide alternative systems and methods of increasing memory density.